A brutally honest exposé, <em>After Mandela</em> provides a sobering portrait of a country caught between a democraticfuture and a political meltdown. Recent works have focused primarily on NelsonMandela's transcendent story. But Douglas Foster, a leading South Africaauthority with early, unprecedented access to President Zuma and to the nextgeneration in the Mandela family, traces the nation's entire post-apartheidarc, from its celebrated beginnings under “Madiba” to Thabo Mbeki's tumultuousrule to the ferocious battle between Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. Foster tells thisstory not only from the point of view of the emerging black elite but also,drawing on hundreds of rare interviews over a six-year period, from theperspectives of ordinary citizens, including an HIV-infected teenager livingoutside Johannesburg and a homeless orphan in Cape Town. This is thelong-awaited, revisionist account of a country whose recent history has beennot just neglected but largely ignored by the West.